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Tropical coral garden wedding at McCormick Ranch

Is it the year of the tropical wedding or what?! Once we saw these photos by Emily of Anna Delores Photography we knew we wanted to share Christyna + Juan’s nuptials on this last day before fall officially begins. Honing in on their Panama-meets-California tropical chic style during a two-year engagement, they adorned McCormick Home Ranch with sweet coral accents + garden blooms.

Juan says, Christyna and I met as undergraduates at Berkeley. I had a chance to lay eyes on her when she attended her first meeting with Berkeley’s Black Business Association. I always thought she was attractive and smart and had the opportunity to introduce myself to her (right as I’m writing this Christyna realized for the first time that I had been scoping her out before that meeting). It was a brief introduction (she likes to say I only said five words, “Hi my name is Juan,” to her for the entire semester) but it set the stage for what would be a beautiful journey together. After 12 years, 2 bachelors degrees, 5 moves, 3 years long distance, 2 MBAs, and a crazy little dog, I can’t imagine life any other way with anyone else.

Christyna, on their wedding style, I always wanted a garden party wedding, being surrounded by beautiful flowers and trees with lots and lots of bistro lights everywhere. In terms of colors, the only thing I knew was that I loved coral. As I started thinking about the wedding theme, I wanted something more cohesive and representative of us as a couple. That’s when I came up with the idea to do a tropical themed wedding as an ode to Juan’s Panamanian heritage. It would be Panama meets California as a representation of us.

Their talented friend Peter whipped up this coral and pink escort card display as a special DIY!

How sweet is it that the bride walked down the aisle with her grandma? Another fave moment was getting ready with her bridesmaids and getting to wear one of her ‘maids veils during the ceremony.

All coral everything, please!

We have a little bit of an old soul quality to us (for Christyna, that’s the result of many summers spent with her grandparents and their friends in Vegas) so we wanted that to come through in our musical selections. I came out to I Choose You by Willie Hutch and Christyna walked down the aisle to At Last by Etta James (a fitting song after 12 years together). We did our first dance to Al Green, Still in Love with You.

My Lovely Events was behind the wedding planning and Susie Cakes is to credit for this spectacular floral cake. The long engagement (with Christyna in grad school and Juan just out) made it easy to second-guess decisions and overthink, but in the end, they chose all the vendors they loved from the beginning. Moral of the story… Go with your gut!

Final words on their photographer… Emily Reiter with Anna Delores Photography is THE BEST! I’m a researcher and have a tendency to research things to death. I knew that the wedding would be a blur and that the photos would be our way of reliving the wedding for the rest of our lives. I took a long time to officially decide to go with Emily but once I did, I never looked back. Emily has an amazing eye and from looking at her pictures I knew that she would be just the right person to capture all the little details that made our wedding ours. I also felt her warmth and energy from the moment I first met her and knew that she would put us at easy in order in order to capture who we are as a couple.